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Victims of Jacksonville Dollar General shooting honored on anniversary

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In memory of Jerrald Gallion, Angela Carr, Anolt “AJ” Laguerre Jr.

For the second time in nearly a year, mourners gathered on a small strip of grass in Jacksonville's Grand Park/New Town neighborhood on Sunday, looking at the Dollar General where three residents were killed in a racist shooting last August.

Now, however, the site is called Kings Road Memorial Park, and community members honored Jerrald De'Shaun Gallion, 29, Angela Michelle Carr, 52, and Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre Jr., 19, with a dedication and soil-picking ceremony – a long-standing tradition continued locally by the Jacksonville Community Remembrance Project to promote racial equality and create public memorials to victims of lynching.

The soil came from the Dollar General building at 2161 Kings Road, where they were killed. Attendees at Sunday's memorial service placed it in jars bearing the names of Gallion, Carr and Laguerre Jr., which were then given to their families.

“We know that our history of racial inequality and hatred haunts us across America and in Duval County,” said Alex Rudnick, a co-chair of the project. “We know we must speak and name these truths, because we cannot fix what we do not name. Today we remember the lives that were taken from their families and loved ones, and the survivors who live with this trauma. We are committed to ensuring that their lives were not lost in vain.”

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Family and friends mourned their losses. Speakers repeated the names of the victims and pointed to the impact – or lack thereof – of policies in the following year. Some community members speculated whether things would ever change in New Town.

Actions and lack thereof following the Dollar General shooting

Immediately after the shooting, which ended in the suicide of the 21-year-old gunman, local nonprofits launched several fundraisers to benefit the victims' families and the surrounding community. Dollar General Corp. set up an employee fund and later renovated the Kings Road store to include fresh food sales.

At the legislative level, the response to the shooting was not as strong as some lawmakers would have liked.

Councilwoman Ju'Coby Pittman, one of the hosts of Sunday's event, co-sponsored a hate crimes bill that would increase penalties for people who commit certain crimes — littering, noise, light projections — when the intent is to endanger other people or their property. Ward 7 Councilman Jimmy Peluso introduced the bill in April, saying it was in response to residents who urged him to take action after the shooting.

“We don't want anyone to think, like that sick gentleman in Clay County, 'Oh, I see swastikas. I see Nazi symbols … and therefore I can march into a neighborhood and murder and cause harm,'” Peluso said as he urged the council to vote for the bill. “This bill is to make sure that we don't give anyone the power to think it's OK.”

The city council rejected the bill on August 14.

But change could come in other ways. The Jacksonville Transformation Coalition, a group of business, political, nonprofit and academic leaders formed after the shooting, still meets regularly to develop plans for how the city can combat all hate.

Darlene Neal, president of the Grand Park Community Association, told the Times-Union on Sunday that she hasn't noticed any change in the neighborhood since the shooting – and she's not particularly confident there will be any such change in the future.

“But I'll keep trying,” Neal said. “I'll keep doing what I'm supposed to do, and hopefully the new city council will do what they're supposed to do.”

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She said she wants the city to go through with the memorial, but the neighborhood also needs medical care, a grocery store and better infrastructure.

“Grand Park has a history,” Neal said. “People love each other here. People care about each other. A lot of the older people are still here. We don't have anything here… We just ask for the same thing they get there. [the Westside, Arlington]the same thing is happening here.”

What does Mayor Donna Deegan say one year after Dollar General?

Mayor Donna Deegan attended Sunday's event, but also met with the Times-Union on Wednesday to discuss the city's efforts to improve the New Town community and the communities left behind after the city-county merger.

She supported the coalition's work and said a member of her staff attends its meetings. The coalition is divided into subgroups that will meet in the fall.

“If everyone isn't pulling in the same direction, it's hard to really address these issues,” Deegan said. “And of course there are different opinions about what we should and shouldn't do. So we really need to focus on what we can do, what we can agree on, what we can do together. And then make a difference.”

She wanted to make such investments through the Capital Improvement Plan, the city's five-year plan for countywide projects. The current plan calls for 10 projects in the next five years in District 10, where the shooting occurred, including a new fire station, additional sidewalks and pollution cleanup.

It also aimed to boost neighborhoods through its nationwide literacy and health insurance initiatives, although it will take longer to prove the benefits of these initiatives.

“I think it's wonderful that there is short-term help, but in the long term we need to develop strategies and put our words into action to change lives there,” she said.

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